Monthly Archive:: October 2014

Fish: Role of swim bladder

A swim bladder is for a fish as lungs are for human. The fish takes in oxygen from the water using its gills. There are also some species especially those in slow-moving waters gulp air at the surface. An example is lung fish. The lung fish has a swim bladder richly supplied with blood vessels

Different types of blood vessels in the human body

Blood takes a very long trip inside the human body. The blood vessels accomplish this task of carrying blood to all the organs of the body from and back to the blood pumping station or the heart. The study of blood vessels is called angiology. The heart, the blood vessels and the blood together are

Diaper: How does it work?

When water is poured on a dry diaper, it absorbs them and the top layer remains dry. This is because of the presence of a super-absorbent layer found in diapers. Now, the magic of absorbing lot of water is done by a chemical present in the super-absorbent layer. It is Sodium polyacrylate.    Sodium polyacrylate

Pencil erasers and pencil marks

The dark black thing that you see inside the pencils is graphite. Graphite is one of the forms of the element carbon. Wood is the protective outer covering surrounding the graphite lead so that it doesn’t break easily. Pencil lead is made of a combination of finely ground graphite and clay. The mixture is then

Silkworms and silk

Production of silk from silkworms is called Sericulture. The lifecycle of any moth goes through many stages. Initial form is that of an egg. The eggs hatch into caterpillars which eat, grow and molt several times. The caterpillar or larva changes into a pupa. From the pupa emerges the adult insect. Silkworms are not worms